Filter in the name of protection

Published July 22, 2013

I think it’s shocking that one of the central pillars of the concept of the Internet, free access to all things, is casually eroded by David Cameron in the name of “protecting the children”. This is appalling. Whilst I’m sure that this will give some poor quality parents an illusion of online safety, saving them from what must surely be a terrible chore of actually having to care about what their children are doing for themselves, filtering traffic by default is a massive blow to online freedoms. This will not make things better. This paves the way for the government to more fully dictate how and what we should view on the Internet in the future – after all, if the technical filters are already in place, why not just increase them a nudge to filter out more content that the government deems “unsuitable”? And, of course, the elephant in the room is that those people who do not have these filters activated, who choose instead to maintain real access to the Internet, will have suspicion cast upon them.